Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Tzniut: Revisited for the Eight Billionth Time

You know, friends, I feel there was something I would have liked to have spoke about last week, but totally forgot about: tzniut. I know I've spoken about this topic over here until the point that "my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth" but, as with most matters in life, new events call for new perspectives.

There has recently been some talk about a new book on tzniut that has appeared on the book shelves. I browsed through the book I thought was the one spoken about (although it happened to have been a different book they were discussing) to get an idea about what had caused the hubbub. I didn't see anything particularly objectionable about the book, but it did seem to reinforce an opinion that I had heard about not long before, regarding how much of the area below the neck it is proper for a girl to have revealed. The opinion I had recently heard was that if a girl is wearing a button-down shirt/blouse, it is better to have the top button closed. My opinion on the matter before this had simply been that it is a queer way to carry oneself about, and that the matter had been sufficiently discussed on Seinfeld. The book contended though, that since, unlike the limbs of a woman, a higher level of stringency is placed on the torso (and directly under the neck is part of the torso) it must be covered.

I had once seen in a similar book an opinion that said that since "The Song of Solomon" considers the neck of a woman a beautiful thing, it can be inferred that it should be covered. It therefore suggested girls wear high collars to cover their necks. What I have always found disturbing about this area of "Ashkenazi halacha" is that it's entirely hypocritical. For example if they were so very concerned about the covering of the neck, what more thorough way to accomplish that than a neck-covering H'ijab? And as I've stated numerous times here, their whole approach to the subject is antithetical: According to their rulings it is permitted for a woman to to don a skirt that covers only the top part of her legs (and knees) as long as the lower half is covered by stockings. Yet it's well known that stockings themselves on a woman are considered a thing of attraction, and even getting a glimpse of the stockings on the lower leg of a woman was considered semi-erotic in the past. According to those standards, women such as the wife of the last "Rebbe" of Lubavitch was very sorely lacking in her fulfilment of Jewish laws of modesty. I mean, who said I want to see an old woman's lower legs?

I know this too is something I've ranted on in the past, but there is a well known custom among the Hasidic Jews of south-eastern Europe to not only cover their hair with a wig, but to have a kerchief at least partly covering the hair. Many women who follow that custom today seem as if all they have covering their hair is a kerchief that seems to be covering only a small portion of the hair. How does it help to have Jewish women look like Gypsies? I don't see the touch of modesty in such an outlandish fashion.

But it is well known that this is but the smallest example of the confusion prevalent among the Jews of Eastern Europe. It has always been clear to me that those on the other side of their religious spectrum were more correct, such as the Settler-girls (in Judea and Samaria) who wear pants beneath their skirts. Surely that is the most modest way of going about things.

But what of those on the extreme left? It is their argument that what is considered "modest" changes tremendously with the prevailing fashions. While I do agree wholeheartedly with that opinion, can it be said that if the people of the world all become nudist it would be correct for us to follow suit, since now those parts of the body do not inspire erotic thought? I do not feel so. There must be a middle ground. As far as the current situation of Western dress, I have always felt that it is perfectly possible to be modest while wearing jeans and a tee shirt. While perhaps not entirely ideal, as long as the important parts of the upper arms and legs are not visible, there wouldn't be much of a problem aside for the fact that the shape of the legs is evident. But then again, that is just another example of the hypocrisy of the Ashkenazi tzniut idea. They bring for an example the fact that the 'hip area' (no, not Tribeca!) should not give off it's shape through the clothing, which is one of the reasons they strongly encourage wearing skirts. Yet that logic would necessitate women to wear free-flowing tops cover the lower-back. Instead they wear skirts in which the shape of the hip area is evident, and have no free-flowing torso-garment covering it. I feel that that is perhaps one of the greatest breaches of the concept of modesty in dress. I mean, here are women criticizing the Muslim girls for wearing pants, when they themselves have the shape of their hip area evident. At least the Muslim girls generally have a 'top' that camouflages the shape of that area.

I know this sounds petty, and is a bit representative of the fact that I'm looking at girls to much, but I do still feel it's important to bring up, and that it's clear that the current Ultra-Orthodox understanding of tzniut is just silly..[This post, by the way, is merely recording a few minutes of thought I had last week, while standing in the vicinity of religious Jews.]

For what you were saying about the neck and collar... We were told by one teacher that you see what you have to cover when you wear a necklace. For example, in the back, you have to cover whatever is below the necklace. Same goes for the sides of the neck. A woman is allowed to have her neck uncovered, but not her torso, and by wearing a necklace you can determine the boundaries of the neck.

Altie: Yeah, I guess I am checking them out too much...but there're some really hot girls around here!

"typical guy fashion (ooo i wonder wut she looks like with all her clothes off.)"- I'm not sure that's how Chareidi guys think.

"as much as u preach, theres nothing anyone can do abt it unless the girls themselves want to change"- I wasn't "preaching", I was just saying that jeans and a tee-shirt for a girl is just as 'tzanua' as a skirt/stockings and blouse, so there's less reason to look askance and girls who dress like that..

"i hate this topic"- You've still gotta' decide what to wear every day.

"i dont care wut others thing so i wear wtvr i want. ish"- Well you should care what G-d thinks. He's important (*sigh*, teenagers!), and you should care about what looks normal in the country you live in (which you obviously do. ..I was just mentioning the only other important thing).

"ud be surprised wut goes on in their minds."- Ha. i can imagine a Chareidi guy peering studiously onto the street, seeimg as if his mind is thouroghly wrapped around a Talmudic 'sugya', when in fact he's really thinking "man, I wonder how that chick would look if she was naked"!

Hanna: "You have to button the top button. Do I button the one on my school uniform shirt? Not usually."- So you don't follow you own rules, eh? I actually tip-toed away from that topic in the post without mentioning it further, because I didn't come to any clear-cut conclusion about it, so..

Though like I said, I guess my conclusion is: It does kind of depend on what's considered uncouth in the society in which you live..

"So you don't follow you own rules, eh?- What is that supposed to mean?"- You said you "have to" button the top button, and then said you don't. I just sounded a little funny to me. (You could have said "the opinion of my teachers is". You said "have to").

Haha, that's hilarious. (..the fact that you don't want people to think badly of you because of saying something like that, not the six year old and the lady..that's not hilarious...it actually is pretty disturbing). (!)

If you're going to use my real name instead of my username, please spell it right: Hannah.

"You said you "have to" button the top button, and then said you don't." -- I meant that the general rule is that you have to button it. It's not just the opinion of my teachers -- we were given a sheet on it.

why is that funny? despite my macho exterier, i do care what ppl think. and especially online where u cant take back wut u say, ppl jump on u for the littles things. i'll mention something abt a guy and theyre all like, ooo shes a bad girl. it bothers me, cuz these ppl dont even know me.

ya it is disturbing.

abt rules- u can begiven them and not follow themaccording to the laws of tznius, my skirt is supposed to cover my knees. (note how i say 'supposed to'. reach a conclusion by yourself.)

israelis are..... wow so many things i cant put it into just one short comment.

for some reason u seem israeli, your personality, though maybe its just the fact that your blog name is in hebrew letters, it could be just a trick of the mind.

so u don't speak hebrew at all, or just not as a first language?

i have to say, if u asked me a while ago i would have straight out said i hate israelis, but that has slowly changed over the year. now i can say, i respect them a lot, admire them, and even like them a little bit.

and btw, ish is a word used to say so so. like how well do i know u? ish, sort of. it only means guy in hebrew, and we are not talking hebrew here. but i like your idea for isha. cute.

"Somebody else on the other hand... who talks about teenagers as if they are another species...."- Haha. It's just like she said, teenage girls can be "fake and petty". I probably wouldn't have had common ground with them as a teen either (I was also a 'mature' type of teen, even most of the kids in my class seemed a bit babyish).

so u were a mature teen. funny, i usually say that guys dont mature until they are at least 30, so in my opinion, for all your 25 years you should still be immature. but i dont know u enough to make that assumption, so ill give u the benifit of the doubt.

and i know how it is with being the odd one out, and feeling like everyone around u needs to grow up a lot, and why do u have to be stuck with them.

ish- hey, sem girls are not old old, but i think im a bit old and mature.

"for some reason u seem israeli, your personality"- Being someone who hangs out with Israelis a lot, I can say that in real life I'm not very similar to most Israelis (though I hope for my kids to be fully integrated into the Israeli culture).

"so u don't speak hebrew at all, or just not as a first language?"- I learned Hebrew my first year in high school, and since then I've had years that I spend most of my time learning Gemara, sometimes in Israeli yeshivas. I guess it has affected my accent because some people say I have an Israeli accent in English, and most Israelis don't feel I have an american accent.

"and btw, ish is a word used to say so so"- I guess it goes to show I'm thinking in Hebrew..

"..thanks for putting a name to it, i was trying hard to figure out what your poblem is"- You know, I think I just noticed how degoratory that is..

"are your parents israeli? they never spoke to u in hebrew? are u gonna live in israel when u get married?"- Well, *ahem*, my parents are both olim, my mother from America and my father from Morocco, and they met there (I think I mentioned this in a post). They both spoke English with each other and me when they came to America. And yes, I see it as a betrayal to the Jewish people to raise ones family outside of Israel. My opinion would have been the same a hundred and fifty years ago when there were only Arabs there..

"and shriki btw, a piece of your own advice- dont get insulted by what bloggers say"- *sigh*. ..it was funny though..

i dont agree. i think it is important for a jew to live in israel, but its not an obligation. plus if u think abt it, there are many lost jews out there who need our help, and there are shluchim and mekuravim who are doing a great job. so no, their job is not to live in israel. and i know for myself id never survive therer.

Israel: People more intelligent than us have already wrote extensively on the subject. All we can do is put down our novels and patiently sort through the sources to see which opions we agree with more. I'm thinking of the writings of people like Rav Kook, Rav Scheerson (Chabad) and Rav Teitelbaum (Satmar).

"its ok, if u want to be a recluse its fine with me"- I wasn't asking you, but ok.. : P

על המחבר

I'm a Talmudist who has emerged from the Beit Midrash into the world with a vision that filters my reality through a Theological prism, though on the other hand I feel our religion has been corrupted by adding too much to it. I therefore attempt to reevaluate life and Judaism using thinkers in the spirit of Rational Judaism as my guide, while sometimes digressing about my station in life.
...I also talk about shidduchim sometimes!